Blind Spots

I went to visit the eye doctor to have my vision checked earlier this year, and he asked, “Has anyone ever told you that you have cataracts?” That came as a shock, as I was completely unaware that dark spots were growing inside my eye, slowly impeding my vision.

A cataract is a clouding of the eye’s lens that occurs naturally as people age. It’s caused by a buildup of proteins in the lens that clump together, making it harder for light to pass through to the retina. Initially, vision fades. If left untreated, blindness eventually occurs.

Cataracts can occur in one eye or both. Some of the more common symptoms of cataracts are faded colors, halos around lights, double vision, poor night vision, sensitivity to light or glare, or frequent changes to eyeglass prescriptions.

Yes, I’d been wearing glasses for some time to correct farsightedness, but this was a surprise. My optometrist referred me to see an ophthalmologist to evaluate my treatment options. A series of tests confirmed large, growing cataracts in both eyes, limiting not only my field of vision, but the amount of light that could enter my eyes.

I had blind spots, and I was completely unaware.

This explained why, when I was driving at night, the headlights from oncoming traffic made it difficult to see the road in front of me, and why my peripheral vision wasn’t as good as it once was. It also explained why my vision was impaired, requiring me to wear glasses. The words on the books I was reading weren’t shrinking; cataracts were making it harder to read.

The doctor recommended lens replacement surgery, a procedure that involves making a small slit in the eye so the damaged internal lens can be removed and replaced with a new one. The surgeries were scheduled about three weeks apart, starting with my right eye.

I remember showing up the day they were going to perform the surgical procedure on my right eye. The staff was friendly, making me feel relaxed. After being taken to the preparation area, the nurses seated me in a surgical chair and started applying drops to dilate my eye. Needless to say, the book I brought to read as I waited became next to impossible to read.

About an hour after going into the prep area, I was wheeled back to the surgical room. They laid me back, positioned a small device over my eye to hold it open, and the surgeon began to delicately remove the damaged lens and carefully replace it with a pristine lens. Yes, I was awake, but I experienced no pain or discomfort.

In about 15 minutes, I was wheeled out of the surgical unit into a recovery room. My protective plastic shield was placed over my eye, which I was required to wear overnight. The following morning, I went back to the surgeon’s office for a post-surgical follow-up. The shield was removed, and I could see the world around me in bright, vivid color.

The team took me through a vision exam, and I started reading letters and numbers with amazing clarity. My right eye, previously impaired, was able to read all of the characters on the 20/20 line and almost all on the 20/15 line. The room was brighter than I remembered, and the amount of detail I could see was greatly enhanced.

I realized I had been seeing the world around me dimly, through a haze. But, no more.

I had been living with blind spots, and I was completely unaware.

I was missing out, not seeing everything that was around me, and what I was seeing, I was seeing dimly – missing out on a lot of detail.

Here’s something I learned…

We all experience blind spots in our lives.

As a result, we don’t realize what we may be overlooking, ignoring, or simply not seeing.

We may be walking past the opportunity of a lifetime, oblivious to the fact we’re missing out.

Blindness to opportunity is a blind spot we need to correct.

When we are “Opportunity Blind,” we either walk through life unaware of the opportunities that are always before us, or we are unable to recognize circumstances or situations that could be leveraged to our personal or professional advantage. Daily, life presents us with opportunities, often disguised as problems or challenges, that are the next potential setup for success. Failing to see them and take action means we’re missing out.

There are four common symptoms associated with Opportunity Blindness that we need to be aware of. Like a cataract, they can impede how we see the world around us, limiting our field of view, and clouding our ability to see clearly the opportunities life is presenting to us.

The first of these is having a fixed mindset.

We’re all creatures of habit. Our brain loves the familiar, so much so that it does everything within its power to maintain homeostasis, a state of sameness. It routinely aligns the 86 billion neurons into clusters, hardwiring daily routines so we perform them without conscious thought.

As such, we tend to approach the same tasks the same way every day. We have a wake-up routine that rarely (if ever) varies. We likely take the same route to work each day, perform the same routines each day, take lunch or dinner at the same time, and navigate the same route back to our home, where we go through the same after-work and get-ready-for-bed routine as well.

Day in and day out, it’s the same ole, same ole.

A fixed mindset also approaches problem-solving the same way. If something worked, we repeat that process without considering if there might be a better, more efficient, more productive means to accomplish it. If something didn’t work, we will often avoid having to face that same challenge or obstacle again, because we believe we are incapable of solving this challenge or overcoming this obstacle.

Because we’re not open to seeing what could be, we simply settle for what we already know, never learning, growing, maturing, or expanding in the process. This is settling for less.

The second common symptom of Opportunity Blindness is fear of failure.

The brain loves to win, so much so that it releases dopamine, the “feel good” chemical, every time we do so. When we fail, our dopamine levels drop, and we experience a sense of sadness or depression. As a result, we tend to avoid areas of unfamiliarity or prior failure, as we don’t want to experience that same sense of failure, loss, inadequacy, or depression.

This subconsciously creates a cognitive bias in favor of doing the things we already know we can do well, that align with our existing beliefs. Rather than attempting to do something new, expanding our capabilities, we allow the fear of the unknown to color our view of the opportunity in a negative light. Our primal fight-or-flight mechanism views anything that’s unfamiliar as dangerous, and seeks to protect us from that.

However, if we never venture into the unfamiliar or the unknown, we never get to experience the opportunity to learn something new. As a result, we never discover that we are capable of saying, doing, becoming, and accomplishing more.

We remain where we are, as we are, unchanged.

The third symptom of Opportunity Blindness is a lack of perspective.

The old adage, “You can’t see the forest for the trees” reminds us that how we see the world is how we respond to the world. Sometimes, the problems we are experiencing can be more readily solved if we only gain a different perspective or examine the problem from a different vantage point.

When we can position ourselves to see the bigger picture, or align ourselves with other visionaries who can, we see what “could be” possible. This outside-the-box thinking is essential for turning a challenge or problem into an opportunity. When we lack perspective, it’s like trying to assemble a puzzle with all the pieces turned upside down.

We can’t make sense out of the chaos.

The greatest innovators of past and present utilized Big Picture Thinking to see what others couldn’t see and take the risk of trying something new, unique, or different to accomplish what others said could not be done.

The fourth symptom of Opportunity Blindness is a lack of preparedness.

Basketball great, Coach John Wooden, famously said, “When opportunity knocks, it’s too late to prepare.” My mentor, Dr. John Maxwell, often says that a spectacular performance is always preceded by unspectacular preparation. That just about sums it up. If we’re not ready when opportunity presents itself, it will seek out someone who is.

Kobe Bryant didn’t want Opportunity Blindness to rob him of his dream to play in the NBA, so he committed himself to daily preparation. While he trained for 5-8 hours a day, 6 days a week, his peers put in a couple of hours two or three days a week.

In an interview, Kobe noted that if you keep relentlessly preparing, at some point your peers (or competitors) can’t catch up. The preparation gap is simply too wide.

Sadly, far too few people invest enough in themselves enough to gain the skills, hone their talent, and develop the knowledge, wisdom, and insight to see and seize an opportunity when it appears. Getting started is difficult, but compared to persisting until we succeed, it’s easy. In my book, “Black Belt Secrets of Success,” I address this issue early on reminding my readers of the number one Principle of Success:

Successful people do daily what unsuccessful people do sometimes, or not at all.

So, how do we overcome Opportunity Blindness?

First, we cultivate a growth mindset. The quality of thinking that got us to where we are today won’t get us to where we want to go tomorrow. As we learn and grow, we start to believe we are capable of saying, doing, and becoming more. This, in turn, allows us to grow into the opportunities life is bringing our way.

A growth mindset is the prescriptive cure for a fixed mindset. It’s also a remedy for a lack of perspective, because personal growth changes our perspective, allowing us to creatively seek answers to opportunities disguised as problems and challenges. As we learn, apply, and teach others what we’re learning, we also mitigate the negative influences of a lack of preparedness.

Secondly, we overcome the Blind Spots in our lives by challenging our negative beliefs. Much of what we believe we can’t do is rooted in either our primal fight-or-flight mechanism or is nothing more than negative beliefs passed down generationally that we have subconsciously embraced without ever questioning or challenging.

For personal growth to take place, and to remove the Blind Spots from our lives, we must learn to question negative assumptions about what we “believe” we are capable of. After all, at one time, most of us didn’t believe we could ride a bicycle without training wheels, roller skate, swim without a life vest, or jump from a high dive.

Challenging our negative beliefs is a powerful remedy to overcome the cognitive biases that are holding us back so we don’t just experience more of the same.

Lastly, we embrace risk and learn from failure.

One of the things I often remind my audiences when I’m speaking is that nothing changes until something changes. When we are unwilling to take risks, to put ourselves out there and be willing to fail, we never discover what we are capable of saying, doing, or becoming. Life uses failure to reveal to us what doesn’t work, so we can try something new until we discover what ultimately does work. Ask Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, or Stephen Spielberg.

When we look at some of the greatest innovators of the modern era, we see that they all failed their way to success. Failing doesn’t make us a failure. It’s a moment in time, and a learning opportunity waiting to be explored. We’re only a failure if we quit trying.

Thomas Edison said it well, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” This is the remedy for overcoming the fear of failure, one of the symptoms of Opportunity Blindness.

Remember this…

We all experience blind spots in our lives.

As a result, we don’t realize what we may be overlooking, ignoring, or simply not seeing.

We may be walking past the opportunity of a lifetime, oblivious to the fact we’re missing out.

Blindness to opportunity is a blind spot we need to correct.

When we are “Opportunity Blind,” we either walk through life unaware of the opportunities that are always before us, or we are unable to recognize circumstances or situations that could be leveraged to our personal or professional advantage.

Daily, life presents us with opportunities, often disguised as problems or challenges, that are the next potential setup for success. Failing to see them and take action means we’re missing out.